


Hanged I Shall Be

by athousandwinds



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Ghost Stories, M/M, Murder, Victorian Attitudes, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas Eve at the Hargreaves house, and something is stirring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hanged I Shall Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veleda_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veleda_k/gifts).



> O God, they're going to hang me now  
> Between the earth and sky.  
> O God, they're going to hang me,  
> It's a death I hate to die.
> 
> But I'd not mind the hanging,  
> If only I had rest  
> From this burning, burning, burning hell  
> That's burning in my breast.
> 
> \- The Oxford Girl (trad.)

 

It was Christmas Eve and the house-party was bright and merry. The little girl who presided over the foot of the table was thrilled to be allowed to stay up, and her brother had relented enough to pour her a glass of champagne. The bubbles went up her nose and made her giggle, but she only drank a sip of it, because it tasted nasty. Outside, the wind whistled, but that was the only noise, for the softly falling snow blanketed all sound. There would be no leaving the house for days. The guests had gathered round the fire in the Red Room, cuddling into warm feather-down duvets and drinking mulled wine.

"We should tell stories," said Miss Markham, a very pretty girl whose hair curled around her face like a halo.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Mrs Douglas, who had taken to mothering little Merryweather. She felt sorry for her, shut up all alone in a vast Gothic mansion, when she might be playing with girls of her own age. But what could you expect, with only a brother and no mother for either of them? Merryweather, for her part, had taken to hiding round corners and in secret rooms. "We always tell stories on Christmas Eve. But what kind?"

"Ghost stories, of course!" said Miss Markham, laughing. "There are hardly any other kinds you may tell at Christmas, you know. Don't you agree, my lord?"

"If you like," said my lord Hargreaves, stretching lazily on the sofa. He alone of the party was not huddled in layers of wool and goose-feathers; he seemed impervious to cold or heat. "It must be your own story, though, not one you've read somewhere else."

"And if it is?" asked Miss Markham, coquetting a little. She was not foolish enough to try to attach my lord Hargreaves, despite her mama's sharp glance, but she was a lively girl who enjoyed flirtation for its own sake.

"Why," said my lord Hargreaves, "then you must pay a forfeit."

"And what would that forfeit be, my lord?" she asked, longing for her fan so that she could tap it against her reddened lower lip.

"Why, a kiss, of course," he said, and Miss Markham laughed.

"But what if Sir William tells a borrowed tale?"

"I'll kiss him, too," said Hargreaves, with an impudent look at the baronet, who harrumphed. Mrs Douglas looked as disapproving as she dared and once more felt sorry for poor little Merryweather. Miss Markham's mama felt a megrim coming on.

"Who will be first?" said Miss Markham eagerly, and eventually young Oscar Gabriel obliged. His tale was frankly Byzantine, involving two identical women, unrelated, who both may or may not have been dead at various points, organs in jars and a murderer who could not spell.

"Quite good," Hargreaves applauded with consummate politeness, "if a touch melodramatic, Oscar."

"Yes, the Jack the Ripper part spoilt it," Miss Markham said decidedly, "for he is in all tales of the supernatural nowadays and I am sick of it."

Mr Gabriel seemed most put out by this constructive criticism and flailed most mightily against it. Another glass of wine soon soothed his wounded feelings, and the company passed on to Sir William, who sighed and looked profoundly into his glass.

"I will not lie," he said. "My story may seem unbelievable to you, too fantastical or too eerie, but I promise every word is true, as I saw it."

This caused a ripple of interest among the company and Sir William sipped at his wine again. He was a man of perhaps thirty-five, tall and broad, with good looks untarnished by the silver threading at his temples. Miss Markham's mama, who had high hopes for her daughter, prayed devoutly that she would not see fit to make commentary on Sir William.

"There is in our Abbey a lute," he said, "which was given to my ancestor by King Henry the Eighth, along with the house itself. At that time there was a daughter in the family, some sixteen years a maid, and she excelled in her music. She was a beautiful girl, with golden curls and probably blue eyes and very nice teeth. She was called – I don't know her name, actually, so I shall call her Lily." He smiled at Miss Markham, who was much taken aback by a flirtation she hadn't started. She accepted the compliment with a graceful bow.

"Oh, pooh," said the lady of the house, who was easily bored with lovemaking. "What happened to her? Did she die?"

"Merryweather," said Hargreaves, "if you can't listen quietly I shall send you to bed. Please continue, sir." He resumed his attention to his cuffs, which were perfect but for one of the diamond links, which seemed to be coming loose.

"She fell in love with a highwayman," said Sir William, "which, as you know, rarely ends well. She made plans to run away with him, and take her dead mother's jewels with her to pawn. One night, under the full moon, she met her lover and put her arms round his neck to kiss him. When he saw that she had the jewels, his hands clasped her lovely throat and he choked her until she breathed no longer."

"I knew she'd die," said Miss Hargreaves.

"Merryweather," said her brother, with aggravated patience.

"Please go on, sir," said Miss Hargreaves prettily, and got an approving pat from her brother, which she disdained.

"Now, her lover took the bag of jewels, caught his horse by the reins and rode off on the London road. But at the moment Lily died, the lute began to play her favourite song, lamenting the loss of her lover, and rousing the household. They were soon in fast pursuit of the highwayman, but it was all in vain. When they found him, he was already dead, the jewels he had pawned his life for spilling through his fingers, and there was a lute-string wrapped around his throat."

"Ah," said Oscar Gabriel, "how sad!" He really seemed cast down by the story, and Miss Merryweather deigned to reach over and squeeze his arm.

"Yes," said Miss Markham, looking hard at Sir William, "but you said you saw it?"

"Ever since then, when a member of the family was in danger, the lute has played to warn the others," said Sir William. "Sometimes we can save them. Sometimes," and here a shadow passed over his face, "they die anyway. The last person the lute sang for was – my wife."

Miss Markham said, in much gentler tones, "I had not realised the loss was so recent."

"About a year," he said. "I was sleeping, and I believe the lute sang to me in my dream, a very sweet and plaintive song. _Saying, 'Kind sir, don't murder me, I am not prepared to die'_ – I think you must know it." His voice was good, clear and strong, and did not deserve the noise of amusement Lord Hargreaves made, reclining on the sofa. Sir William ignored him.

"I awoke to find my wife gone, and stirred the house to look for her. We found her beneath an old oak, which had been there many hundreds of years, hanging by a lute-string."

Hargreaves said, "How awful for you," and his eyes gleamed like a cat's.

"Yes," said Sir William, and gave Miss Markham a sad smile. She smiled back.

"I think it is my turn," she said, and told a story about a murdered child coming back to haunt her stepmother. It was very simple and short, and Mrs Douglas at least appreciated it, though both Hargreaves and his sister seemed unfazed. The circle then came round to Hargreaves himself, who drained his glass of wine before beginning.

"There once was a man of Greece," he said, "who loved his wife very much. She for her part adored him, and they lived very happily together."

He looked into his empty glass and frowned, before he held it out. He waited while his butler refilled it, and smiled only when he had finished.

"But one day," he said, "as so often happens, tragedy entered this prelapsarian paradise, and the wife died. How this happened, I shall not relate – it is only barely relevant, and involves centaurs – but suffice it to say the man was devastated and wandered the mountains for many weeks playing his lyre. He was, you see, a very good musician. At last, when he could bear it no more, he went and found the entrance to hell."

Suspicion had entered Sir William's expression, but he held his peace.

"He followed it downwards, and came across the guardian, a three-headed dog that roared like a furnace. But he played so sweetly that the dog put its head down on its paws and fell fast – "

"Oh, for shame," cried Miss Markham, "when it was you yourself who proposed that our stories be original!"

"How does it end?" asked Miss Hargreaves, in a more forgiving spirit.

"He plays so beautifully that God allows him to take his wife home, but he loses her just before he finds his way out," said Hargreaves. "The moral of the story is that hell always wins."

"I don't like that moral," said Miss Hargreaves, wrinkling her nose.

"It's a misrepresentation," said their butler unexpectedly, with only the excuse of refilling his lordship's wineglass yet again. "It's about the acceptance of death as inevitable, nothing more."

"I don't like _that_ one, either," said Miss Hargreaves. "Why doesn't Cain know any _happy_ stories, Riff?"

"You should ask him yourself, Miss Merryweather," said the butler, retreating under Mrs Douglas's offended stare.

"All my happy stories involve you, Merry," said her brother promptly. Miss Markham's heart melted, and even her mama felt more kindly disposed towards him.

"I've always thought it was a romantic story," said Sir William simply, and with weight. "To save one's wife from hell is surely the greatest act of love imaginable."

"Yes, perhaps," said Hargreaves, "but he didn't."

"Anyway, isn't Greek hell different?" asked Miss Markham, whose classical education was sadly spotty.

"Surely it would have been better to go with her to hell," said Hargreaves. His gaze was faraway, unfocused; he was looking, if anywhere, at the door where his butler stood. "He could have made sure she was safe himself."

"I think that devotion is rare and terrible, besides," said Sir William. "Why damn both, when both could be saved? It would mean a great selfishness and an unthinkable distrust in God's mercy."

"Not so rare," said Hargreaves, and smiled like a dream. The company was silent.

"Oh, but your forfeit," said Miss Markham, laughing slightly to break the tense moment. "Who shall you kiss, my lord?"

"Mmmm," said my lord Hargreaves. "Why, Riff, if he'll have me," and a current of horror ran through the party, which was most unfair, as many of them were only there to see what dreadful thing the Earl might do.

The butler shook his head, once.

"Oh, well," said Hargreaves. "I suppose it'll have to be Merryweather, then."

"I _won't_ ," said Miss Hargreaves fiercely, "because you're _horrible_ and I _hate_ your story – !" and she squirmed away from the kiss he dropped on the top of her head.

"Cheat," said Miss Markham, but Lord Hargreaves did not rise to her bait. Instead, he looked lazily round the party.

"Whose turn is it now?" he asked.

The evening wore on, and eventually the ladies retired. Miss Markham and Miss Hargreaves went together, to lessen the sting of being packed off to bed "as if I were a _baby_ ", and soon Miss Markham's mama followed her, for she had little wish to remain in the Earl's company. One by one they trickled away, until at last only his lordship remained, drinking another glass of mulled wine as the fire burned lower and lower.

Although the servants, too, had been dismissed to their beds, one had lingered, folding away the abandoned blankets and clearing the glasses. Finally, he came forward and, most unusually, sat down without permission.

"Did you bring the bottle?" asked Cain.

"No, sir," said Riff. "You have things to do tonight."

"I don't have to," said Cain, and for the first time that evening looked his age, which numbered fewer than twenty years. "The bromide's in his cocoa, he won't notice."

"No, my lord," said Riff.

Cain looked at him, and then rose with a sigh. His step was initially unsteady, but Riff gripped his arm and thus he made his way down the hall with tolerable equanimity.

"Sir William!" he called softly, knocking on the door. "Let me in."

There was a scuffling noise, and then a sleepy-seeming baronet answered. "I am sorry, my lord, I was dressing for bed."

"Not at all, it hardly matters," said Cain. Riff shut the door behind him quietly, and just as quietly shot the bolt.

"What on earth – ?" Sir William began, but had not the wit to shout before Riff grasped him securely. The pistol held to his temple silenced him immediately.

"I was a friend of your wife's," said Cain, "and I would like to know why she wrote to me before her death and asked for my help."

"I wanted to save her," said Sir William. "No one knows how hard I tried to save her."

"It is nowadays illegal to imprison your wife for refusing you your conjugal rights," said Cain in gently mocking tones. "We live in dark times, indeed, but I assure you that that is the case. I imagine, also, that your servants were well-aware. Indeed, I know they were, for it is your chambermaid Ellen who told Riff all about it." He paused. "She was very upset."

Sir William raised his tired head. "I saved her," he said. "She died in a state of grace."

"Yes, that part did look bad for you," said Cain. "Luckily, your friend the vicar has known you many years, and so he persuaded himself of your wife's desire for absolution before her suicide. The appointment to one of the Royal Peculiars probably didn't hurt."

"She was doing damage to her own soul," said Sir William. His gaze wandered, and then fixed itself with startling focus on Cain's face. "Wouldn't you do that for someone you loved?"

"No," said Cain. There was no hesitation in his voice.

"Will you stay and pray with me?" Sir William asked, the weariness in his tone indescribable. "If I am to die."

Cain rose. "Why would I?" he asked. "I'm going to hell anyway." He looked at Riff. "See that he doesn't."

"Yes, sir," said Riff, and took a coiled lute-string from his pocket. He had had it all the evening in anticipation of this command.

Cain shut the door behind him and walked quickly down the hall. As he reached the stairs, Miss Markham opened her door and ventured her head out.

"Is everything all right? I heard voices..."

"I'm afraid Sir William has been taken ill," said Lord Hargreaves. "I must ride for the doctor."

"Oh, no!" she said. "Is there anything I can do?" She stepped outside and made as if to run to Sir William's room then and there.

"No!" Hargreaves said, so sharply that Miss Markham stared at him. He faltered, shut his eyes, and said, "I – I cannot lie to you. I wouldn't – Sir William has hanged himself."

Miss Markham's hand covered her mouth in horror.

"It is already too late, I think," said Hargreaves. "But I must try – I needn't ask you to keep this secret."

"Of course not," said Miss Markham, though she was troubled by the request, and thought that she would tell her mama in the morning nevertheless. "Please – is there anything to be done, really? I would like to help."

"I am afraid not," said Lord Hargreaves. "My man Riff has medical training; he is already doing everything that is necessary."

"I'm glad," said Miss Markham, and, "Good luck!" as Lord Hargreaves descended the stairs. She went back inside and curled up in bed, her mind whirling.

Cain rode at a slow trot to the village, mentally counting down the minutes until Riff had arranged the room. The note had been their final touch; Riff had shown a remarkable aptitude for forgery. At last, even going so slowly, he came to the village and rapped on the doctor's front door.

"We have a suicide at the manor," he said without preamble when the doctor answered in his dressing-gown. "Please come at once."

The doctor came, but his examination was cursory. He thought mostly of what a hellish scandal it would be for my lord Hargreaves and, although he disliked him heartily, he could only feel sorry for him.

"He has a family," Hargreaves said, his face tight. "Can we – for their sake – keep this quiet?" This was, for all intents and purposes, entirely true. Sir William had had a number of relatives, most of whom had never met him.

"There may have to be an inquest," the doctor said gently. But the coroner was his brother and he thought he could square him. The cause of death was clear enough, for God's sake, and there was no need to deny the man's family burial in consecrated ground.

He left eventually, and although breakfast was a sombre affair, with Lord Hargreaves's subdued announcement, there was no obvious scandal brewing. Miss Markham whispered to her mama afterwards that it had been suicide, her mama told Mrs Douglas in confidence and naturally the whole house-party knew it by lunch. They were all very sorry – for Lord Hargreaves primarily, since he had had the bad luck to have a man kill himself in his home, which suggested awfully bad manners. Mrs Douglas found it hard to resist the topic of ropes at dinner, but no one else came near to mentioning it. There was no inquest, but within a week the whole county knew of the suicide. Some, who lived close to Sir William's baronetcy, had even come up – entirely independently – with the idea that he had done it with a lute-string.

After a month, only Cain still thought about it. He was largely unconcerned with whether he had been moral; he knew he had not. He was thinking of hell, and its attendant delights.

"I'm sorry," he said one night, as Riff read through his letters in the study. Riff tilted his head in query. Any bout of remorse was quite unknown to Cain; he only blamed himself for things that could not be helped. "I'm dragging you down with me."

Riff stood, passing a hand over Cain's dark hair. Cain turned to stare at him, his eyes widening.

"You owe me a kiss, my lord," he said, and left the room. Cain followed him, and together they went to another place, neither hell nor heaven, and were happier for it.


End file.
